Manic
by Pinkie Tuscadaro
Summary: Craig goes to Calgary for rehab but finds out Joey is going to send him to a psych ward first.
1. Chapter 1

Ellie was beyond hurt. I know I had hurt her before, like last year at the wedding gig. I hurt her when I didn't choose her, and I knew she had liked me and everything. But this time, I didn't know. I'd really gone too far, kissing her back stage just so she wouldn't call Joey about the coke. Telling her I loved her. I mean, I loved her as a friend. That wasn't, that wasn't how I made it seem.

She was backing up away from me, trying not to cry but she was crying anyway. So I let her go. The airport seemed to expand around me, and I felt that feeling, that yearning for a line. And I felt my thoughts start to race, start to become a little more fantastic than I knew was good for me. I hadn't taken my meds in a while. Kind of off and on, and they didn't work so great that way. But I'd been getting sick of being a slave to that medication, that constant reminder that I was sick.

Simpson was hovering over me, and I knew Joey sent him to make sure I got on the plane. Maybe I wouldn't have if no one was here to make sure. I felt that familiar frustration with Joey, like when he didn't want me to go to England to see Ash. He treated me like I couldn't exactly take care of myself and that pissed me off. But he was sort of right, and that pissed me off even more. All my stupid life I'd just wanted to be normal, to be fine. That's kind of how I always thought of it. _I'm fine_, despite my mother leaving, my mother dying, my father beating me. I'm fine, I'm fine. Staying up for days, writing so many songs, thinking I could marry Ashley in grade 11. No big deal. Everything was fine. Fiending lines of coke and bleeding onstage, nothing was wrong. What makes you think that?

Simpson, though. He had this almost comic look of disapproval, like I'd personally let him down. His arms were folded and he was kind of glaring at me. I closed my eyes, and my thoughts were going so fast. Ellie. God, I'd hurt her so much and I didn't mean to. That was stupid, what I did. It was heartless. She'd never forgive me. I didn't see how she possibly could. And Manny. Manny had never, I mean, she whirled around and she glared down at me too and she's like, "I'm dumping your ass, Craig," She'd never been that cold, except for maybe when I told her I broke up with Ashley and I really didn't back in grade 10. These same people that go back through the years. But I was burning my bridges with all of them.

I boarded the plane and Simpson said a curt goodbye, his arms still folded. Whatever. I slumped in the airplane seat. I hated planes. They were too closed in, there was no air in them. I closed my eyes but I was too wide awake to sleep. This was the bipolar, I could feel it. I could feel the energy in my nerve cells, tingling, waking up my thoughts, shooting them like pool balls into these pockets of thought, each idea more intricate than the last. Screaming to touch the sky, that's some line from some poem someone showed me in group once, or maybe it was when I was in the hospital. I didn't know. These things tended to run together.

The plane landed in Calgary and I stumbled off , my desire for coke almost hurting me now. I wanted it. I kept thinking of all these things, too, like in the background of the craving. Music ideas. Seeing Ellie's tear stained face and feeling her shove me, "you bastard," she'd said, "how could you play with me like that?"

"Craig," It was Joey, standing with his arms folded like Simpson, but he had a sadder look, filled with love and sorrow. I sucked in my breath. I caused that look, I caused those lines on his face. How much had I hurt him? I didn't even want to think about it sometimes.

"Uh, hey. Hi, Joey," I felt like such a loser. I was going to go and have this great music career and now here I was, strung out, manic, and back in his care. It was just like that night in the cemetery. I was always broken and he always had to put the pieces back together. Sometimes I just hated myself for that.

Joey was being quiet. He must be pissed. We got my bags and stuff and went to his car. I sat in the front seat, my legs bouncing up and down, and I rubbed my nose. Shit, I wanted some fucking coke. Would one line be all that bad? How bad could that be? Just one little bump. Jesus, this sucked.

I wanted to ask where Angela was but I didn't. I felt like I wanted to say all this stuff but I forced myself not to. Talking. All the talking. Joey knew it was this manic shit, and I didn't want him to suspect that I was off my meds as well as a drug addict.

We drove along for awhile and then Joey spoke up, his tone so serious.

"Listen, Craig, I discussed it with a psychiatrist out here and she said it might be better if you went to a psych unit first-"

"No," I shook my head. Psych unit. MHU. The hospital. No, no, no. I hated the hospital, he knew that. Rehab I thought I could maybe deal with, and I knew they let you leave. Not like locked psych wards. I didn't want to go back to one of those.

"No, Joey, it was supposed to be rehab-"

"Yeah, but I doubt you're taking your meds and I can tell just by looking at you that you're manic and you need to go to the hospital-"

"Please, Joey, no. Okay? Don't, don't make me go to one of those, don't make me go to the hospital. Please?" I watched him drive, watched his expression. Maybe he wouldn't make me go. I didn't think I could handle it, feeling the way I did.

He drove to the hospital, and it looked like most hospitals. Square brick building, special parking for doctors. I didn't get out of the car. He put it in park and turned to me.

"Craig, it isn't punishment. You have a disease, a mental illness. People with diseases, even mental ones, sometimes need to go to the hospital. You need to get stabilized on your meds before you can deal with rehab. This rehab isn't equipped for acute psych-"

"I'm not acute! I'm not manic! Jesus, Joey, I don't need to go here! Okay! Get it! I'm fine! I'm completely fine,"

He stared at me, the look of sadness deeper now. He shook his head.


	2. Chapter 2

I sat slumped in the chair in the ER next to Joey. My legs were stretched out, arms crossed over my chest. This just sucked. I could smell the hospital smell that made me feel so bad. It brought back all this shit. My mom dying. My dad. The first time I ended up in the hospital for this. This. I bit the inside of my cheek. This was never going away.

Joey would look at me from time to time, the patented Joey encouraging look. I wasn't thinking right, I knew it. I could feel it. The thoughts coming in these loose associations. That was the bipolar. The sick need for some coke, that was being a drug addict. I couldn't help blaming Ellie, although it wasn't her fault. She didn't make me do any of it. So she cared enough to call Joey, that was her crime? It was. I sat there in the harsh lights of the ER waiting room and wished she'd just left me alone.

"Craig Manning?" the secretary called after like hours. I stood up to go and talk to the guy, the mental health tech guy. I'd done this before, and now I knew what to expect. I'd done it twice before. There was the first time, that time I beat up Joey and didn't know what the hell was going on. I didn't really know anything was wrong with me then. I thought I'd just kind of lost it, just snapped. I mean, when Joey grabbed me like that that day because he didn't want me to leave, it just brought all that shit with my dad back to me and I couldn't take it. The second time was after I ran away and ended up in that shelter/soup kitchen. I kind of knew what was going on then, despite all that was going on. I knew I'd dumped my meds into the trash, I knew that I was feeling manic then. Acting manic. Whatever. And I guess I know now. Shit. But now I have drug addiction thrown into the stupid mix. Dual diagnosis, that's what they call it. I hate them.

It was a littler office and I sat in the chair that was up against the wall near the door. Joey stood in the doorway. The guy was behind his desk.

"Hi, I'm Doug," he said, shaking our hands, gesturing toward an empty chair for Joey. Joey sat down, and he had that serious look, that crumbling in concern look that I'd gotten so used to over the years.

"So, Craig, what's going on?" he said, and I felt the back of my teeth with my tongue. This was only going one place. I'd be locked up in the psych ward. I might as well get it over with.

"I haven't been taking my meds, well, I've been taking them once in a while, I guess. I mean, I haven't been taking them right, and uh, I'm kind of manic. Kind of. Yeah. And um, uh, I've been doing coke,"

That didn't feel good to admit. It felt like such a loser kind of thing. I mean, it was fine to do it in the bathroom stalls at some nightclub or on the coffee table in some record exec's loft, or in the spare bedroom at Ellie and Marco's house or backstage, but to just sit here and admit it? It sucked.

The guy, Doug, he was writing stuff down. Fine. They needed all of it for the files.

"You're on meds? So you've been diagnosed bipolar?" he said, and I kind of slumped back in the seat.

"Yeah," I said, and then Joey jumped in.

"He was diagnosed when he was 16, two years ago. We were in Toronto,"

Doug was writing down notes, nodding.

"Okay. I'll get on the phone to the Toronto hospital, which one?" Joey told him, and he nodded again, "I'll get on the phone to them and get his records, fax them up to the floor, see if they have a bed, so…okay,"

And that was it. More waiting. Then I'd have to go to the psych ward, and I sighed. I didn't want to go. I couldn't believe it. Shows and nightclubs and girls and music and things were so great and now here I was, under these florescent lights waiting to be shot up with all the drugs I was supposed to take and waiting to kick the ones I shouldn't have taken.


End file.
